The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha was formed in 1952 by Act#41 as a re­li­gious, ed­u­ca­tion­al and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The first group of In­di­an agri­cul­tur­al work­ers ar­rived on May 30th, 1845.

By the year 1950, al­most 50 per cent of the com­mu­ni­ty was re­gard­ed as il­lit­er­ate in Eng­lish. The ma­jor­i­ty of the un­e­d­u­cat­ed were Hin­dus who oc­cu­pied the low­est rung of the so­cial eco­nom­ic and ed­u­ca­tion­al lad­der.

In those days, lit­er­a­cy was mea­sured by an in­di­vid­ual’s abil­i­ty to read, write and un­der­stand the Eng­lish lan­guage.

His abil­i­ty to mas­ter his na­tive lan­guages, Hin­di and San­skrit, mat­tered not, they were Pa­gan lan­guages.

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha was giv­en state per­mis­sion to es­tab­lish schools in 1952 to cor­rect the ed­u­ca­tion­al ne­glect.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha school build­ing be­gan. The then-Chief Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, de­scribed them as “cow sheds.”

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and head of the Ma­ha Sab­ha, Bhadase Sagan Maraj, replied, “It’s bet­ter to ed­u­cate a child in a ‘cow shed’ than to pro­vide that child with no ed­u­ca­tion.”

The SDMS Ed­u­ca­tion Board im­me­di­ate­ly went to work and es­tab­lished 13 pri­ma­ry “cow shed” schools, open to the el­e­ments, yet ful­ly air-con­di­tioned.

To­day, 73 years lat­er, the SDMS owns/op­er­ates 43 pri­ma­ry schools, five sec­ondary col­leges and 13 ear­ly child­hood cen­tres.

Of our sec­ondary schools, Lak­sh­mi Girls’ is 60 years old, Shi­va Boys’, Vish­nu Boys’, Par­vati Girls’ and Saraswati Girls’ cel­e­brate their 25th an­niver­sary. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Brah­ma Boys’ Col­lege, ear­marked for San­gre Grande, was still­born due to the gov­ern­ment of the day.

As one of the part­ners in the ed­u­ca­tion land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we close­ly ob­serve the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in or­der to make ap­pro­pri­ate in­puts and in­ter­ven­tions in our schools, as well as con­tribute to the na­tion­al dis­course on ed­u­ca­tion.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should be un­wa­ver­ing in its ap­proach to trans­form­ing the lives of our chil­dren. It should dis­re­gard too much talk. Stream­lined con­sul­ta­tion should now be the norm, fol­lowed by cre­ation and im­ple­men­ta­tion. This pro­gres­sive think­ing pro­vides dis­com­fort for “arm­chair ed­u­ca­tors,” who use every op­por­tu­ni­ty to swipe at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Suc­cess­ful stu­dents have gen­er­al­ly al­ways been sup­port­ed by par­ents/guardians who un­der­stand the im­por­tance and im­pact of a sound ed­u­ca­tion on their chil­dren’s fu­ture.

Such par­ents/guardians are not sat­is­fied with the cre­ation of a na­tion of beg­gars who are for­ev­er wait­ing on hand­outs from some gov­ern­ment min­istry/agency. Even though there is a place for as­sis­tance in every so­ci­ety, nev­er al­low our chil­dren to fall in­to a state of learned help­less­ness. Our chil­dren must un­der­stand that they live in a glob­al knowl­edge-dri­ven world.

In a glob­alised, tech­no­log­i­cal world, own­er­ship of a com­put­er is not on­ly nec­es­sary, but al­so manda­to­ry. The child who is not fa­mil­iar with the com­put­er is ter­ri­bly de­prived in to­day’s world.

Com­put­ers and elec­tron­ic de­vices pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and the ‘high­ly in­ter­ac­tive’ na­ture of mod­ern soft­ware pro­vides such in­ter­ac­tion.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha Ed­u­ca­tion board has for more than 20 years, in­sist­ed that those who ap­ply to us for jobs as teach­ers pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence of com­put­er lit­er­a­cy.

To­day, it is very fright­en­ing to see and hear re­ports and com­men­taries on the neg­a­tive as­pects plagu­ing our schools across the na­tion. Both teach­ers and stu­dents are in­volved in too many acts of in­dis­ci­pline and the emerg­ing im­ages fright­en the av­er­age cit­i­zens.

School ad­min­is­tra­tors’ hands are tied with bu­reau­cra­cy in deal­ing with these is­sues and some­times they are for­got­ten in the pas­sage of time and nev­er prop­er­ly ex­am­ined.

They, along with their prin­ci­pals, adapt to un­ex­pect­ed con­di­tions in the short­est time pos­si­ble. Every­one who has gone to school knows that some class­rooms are bet­ter, or more in­ter­est­ing than oth­ers.

One of the main prob­lems with ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems world­wide is that they are too ab­stract.

Chil­dren learn that ‘an is­land is a piece of land com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by wa­ter.’ This is a for­mal de­f­i­n­i­tion and as such, de­void of life, hav­ing lit­tle or no space for imag­i­na­tion. This ex­ces­sive ab­strac­tion could cause chil­dren to not like school.

With­in 70 years, the Ma­ha Sab­ha and its ed­u­ca­tion board have been able to change the fo­cus of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty and guide our fol­low­ers to em­brace ed­u­ca­tion.

To­day, we are called up­on to step aside and make way for those who have not worked hard and sac­ri­ficed as we have done.

In the midst of the sec­ond decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry, there­fore, Trinidad and To­ba­go is suf­fer­ing from the ef­fects of a mas­sive ex­o­dus of the most bril­liant peo­ple in our land.